Beaufort Sea potential top-line broodmare sire

Press, 8 October 1987, Page 38

Beaufort Sea potential top-line broodmare sire

By DAVID MCCARTHY The emergence of Beaufort Sea as a potential top-line broodmare sire was one of the less documented sidelights of Spangle’s triumph in the Canterbury Belle Stakes last Saturday. The Wigley family and Inglewood Stud seemed to have enough pleasing coincidences for one day as it was, but the fact that Spangles was the second stakes winner from a Beaufort Sea mare, (Seadreamer was the first) may be of more than passing significance. Beaufort Sea’s stock began racing exactly a decade ago so it is still too early to predict whether his influence as a sire of broodmares will outshine his record as a sire. The indications are there, however, that this will be the case.

Beaufort Sea has impressive credentials in the field. His dam, Homeward Bound, was an Oaks winner while his sire, Nashua, was a noted source of top race mares and a champion broodmare sire.

In addition all but one of Beaufort Sea’s nine stakes winners until the

beginning of this season were fillies or mares, the exception being Beau Bandy; Names like Canterbury Belle, Peat, Buffy Beaufort and Kiwi Bride scarcely need an introduction. It does not always follow that sires of good racemares make the best broodmare sires but there are few exceptions. Beaufort Sea has sired nearly 200 winners and it is the characteristics of his stock which have made him an interesting stallion. A chestnut like his dam, and his maternal grandsire, Alyddon, he, like them, was a stayer, winning at one and a half miles. Alyddon was one of the greatest stayers of the age, rarely “warmed up” until two miles had passed. Yet Beaufort Sea’s best stock have tended to be brilliant horses, at their best up to 1600 m even though many are also chestnuts. They are horses which can be difficult to train in a large team. They require careful handling, need a minimum of fast work and have shown a tendency to enjoy interrupting the detailed routine of the large stable.

It is this brilliance and temperament which suggests Beaufort Sea’s stud career owes much to his sire. ’

Nashua was generally rated the soundest racing son of Nasrullah, a stallion many thousands of trainers have had little cause to thank over the years. Nasrallah was a “sulker,” not averse to retiring from a race if he felt so inclined and when he was sold to the United States there was a sigh of relief heard in many a European stable. The trouble was he was a prepotent stallion and a great sire of sires, many of which were difficult to handle.

They tended to race best when allowed to run along freely, even the best of them not being above losing interest if baulked or hauled in behind. For this reason, perhaps, Nasrallah made a smaller impact on New Zealand racing than may have been expected given his success overseas. His grandsons and greatgrandsons however, especially through the spirited Grey Sovereign line, which have many of the

Nasrullah traits, have been successful. Nashua was a fine stayer winning the Jockey Cub Gold Cup in New York, leading all the way carrying the equivalent of 58kg on a sloppy track in 3:20.6, then a world record for the distance. But he also had the speed to be a champion two-year-old and preferred to go out and ran his races without bothering too much about the niceties of pace and position. He is remembered, too, for his great clashes with Swaps, the grandson of Beau Pere, which beat Nashua in the Kentucky Derby but was then well beaten by him at their second meeting when, significantly, Nashua got to the front early. Some of Nashua’s temperament may have emerged in the Beaufort Sea stock but some of his natural speed has done so too. Given that plus, the fact his mares left two winners last Saturday (the other being the Little Brown Jug colt, Cetacea, at Taranaki), could well be a pointer to a bright future for the Inglewood sire in the broodmare ranks.